1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a storing/retrieving system of information by a computer. In particular, it relates to a system acquiring retrieved results together with messages, messages related to home pages and home page information.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an enormous amount of information stored on the Internet, and the contents thereof are updated day by day. In order to take necessary information out of such information, search engines are utilized.
When retrieval is done by a keyword making use of a search engine, a list of links to home pages containing specified keywords is displayed. When a relevant link among them is chosen and clicked by a mouse and so on, the applicable home page is displayed.
Also, electronic bulletin boards such as the one disclosed in JP-A-106331/1997 are used on the Internet. A plurality of articled are posted for each subject on an electronic bulletin board. With regard to some of the articles, related articles as responses or opinions to the original article are posted. In such a case, there is associated relation between those articles.
Further, instead of electronic bulletin boards, a form called a mailing list is used to send multicasting mail to a specific group. Such mail is used for sharing information, sending articles and discussing opinions, etc. on the articles.
Those articles and mail are stored as massages in Web servers and mail servers for a certain period.
On the other hand, when running an application program on a computer, various events occur as a result.
For example, when output to a printer is over or the application program is ended abnormally, occurrence of the event is reported to a system manager as a massage, which is recorded in a message log.
Further, in relation to the occurrence of the event, an operation such as automatically starting a command is conducted.
When a search engine is used on an electronic bulletin board, messages containing a specified keyword are retrieved. On the electronic bulletin board, however, a massage of question and a message of response are independent messages. Therefore, even if messages containing keywords are retrieved, necessary information is still missing there.
Also, when exchanging information on a mailing list, questions and responses are separate mails. Therefore, even when mail containing the keyword alone is retrieved, the meaning of the response is not clear.
In the case of a message to be reported as a result of running the application program, an operator may respond to the message or a command is executed by automatic response. However, another event is caused by the response of the operator or by the execution of the command and, as a result of this, still another message occurs.
These are recorded in a message log. When a keyword search is conducted later in a particular event in the message log, messages containing the keyword are retrieved. However, messages related to them are not retrieved, and there has been a problem of requiring enormous efforts to retrieve related messages that caused the inconvenience.
For example, when there is a keyword to correspond to a message which is recorded as a result of a command, the message of the command is retrieved by the keyword. However, as to the message which caused the execution of the command, it requires time and effort to investigate the message log manually.
Therefore, in message retrieval, it is the object of the present invention to provide a system which acquires both a message to be retrieved and a message related to the message as a retrieval result.
In order to achieve the above object, the system of the present invention comprises: a means to give, as a file name of a message file of a second message generated as a message related to a first message, a file name of a message file of the first message having caused the second message, and further to give the file name branch-number information showing that the second message is a message related to the first message; a means to store the message file in a database connected to a computer; and a means to retrieve, according to a keyword, a message file containing the keyword from the database and, as a result of the retrieval, to output the message file and a message file having a file name which is made by giving the branch-number information to the file name of the message file.
Further, the system of the present invention comprises: a means to give, when storing while linking the message file of the second message in the database connected to another computer, a file name of the message file of the first message as a file name of the message file and, further, to give the file name branch-number information showing that the second message is related and linked to the first message, and to generate, as contents of information of the message file, a link file to which storing address of the database connected to another computer in which the message file of the second message is stored; and a means to store the generated link file in the database connected to the computer.
Other and further objects, features and advantages of the invention will appear more fully from the following description.